Two Former Valve Devs Leaving For Amazon

Former Valve developers Kim Swift, who is responsible for the hit game Portal and Clint Hocking who is responsible for Splinter Cell and Far Cry 2, are both leaving to join Amazon. This isn’t the first group of developers to leave for Amazon as Double Helix Games (the developers responsible for the newest iteration of Killer Instinct) were acquired this past February.

It seem as if Amazon is taking the whole set top box/game console market very seriously. They’re acquiring many devs from many different studios and game genres so it’s going to be interesting to see the ideas and games the newly acquired talent will come up with. While this is good news we’ll have to wait and see how gamers respond to this new console of sorts. The Fire TV as it’s known was released yesterday and comes with numerous apps both gaming related and entertainment related.

It will be interesting to see where the Fire TV ends up being in a few months time. Do you think it will succeed? Or will it end up suffering the same fast as the Ouya android console? Only time will tell but with the newly acquired talent Amazon seems to be building a strong portfolio of known developers. Let us know what you think in the comments section!